September 16, 2016

The Abe government on September 14 entered the final stage of consideration regarding whether to decommission the defective fast-breeder reactor “Monju” in Fukui Prefecture.

Monju is a core component of the government’s program to recycle spent nuclear fuel. The government has spent more than one trillion yen in taxpayer money on the construction and maintenance of the facility, but Monju had been in operation for only 250 days in total over the last 21 years. If it is decommissioned, the government will have to thoroughly rethink its nuclear power policy.

In April 1994, Monju reached the critical state for the first time. In December 1995, it suspended its operations due to a sodium-leak accident. In May 2010, the breeder reactor began trial operations. Three months later, however, it was shut down again after a 3.3-ton device accidentally fell into its reactor vessel.

In May 2013, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) ordered the operator of Monju, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), not to put the breeder back online for an indefinite period. In November 2015, the NRA recommended the Technology Minister to replace the operator. However, the technology authorities have had difficulty finding a successor.

Meanwhile, in the July Upper House election campaign, the Japanese Communist Party called for termination of the spent nuclear fuel recycling program and the dismantling of related facilities such as nuclear fuel reprocessing plants in addition to Monju.

With regard to the government move, a former professor at Chuo University, Tateno Jun, said, “It’s incumbent to decommission Monju. The government must reconsider its policy to recycle spent nuclear fuel.”

Tateno pointed out that the government policy of extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and using it to run a fast-breeder reactor has come to a dead end.

“Currently, Japan possesses about 48 tons of plutonium. How to deal with that will be the next challenge,” he added.

Past related article:
> Amount of Japan’s plutonium stockpile keeps increasing [February 6, 2016]